Securing the Microsoft OneDrive share

Microsoft has provided a method to easily and conveniently share documents with other persons that are stored within your OneDrive.

How?

This capability creates a shared link which can be sent via email or shared with the person directly.

Security

With this capability, it is important that users takes precaution when sharing their information with others, especially if it is company related.

I recommend the following guidelines when using these capabilities:

1. Verify the email address of the person you are sharing the files with. This email address will be used to validate the access to that share link using access code to the email.

2. Set the correct level of access such as “can view” (which is read-only). If they don’t need to edit the files, then apply the least privilege, which is read only. It protects the files from getting modified uncessarily.

3. Establish a timeline that the person will be assessing the information and set it on the shared link. This ensures the expiration of access without human’s intervention.

4. Dont share the entire drive, all the files should be placed in a folder and the shared link created from there. It limits the access to only that folder and even if it is compromised, it is restricted to that folder only. An additional benefit is that it gives you the flexibility to share additional information with the same party. You can simply drop that files in that folder, and it is readily available to them.

It is important to note that this shared link  from OneDrive is publicly accessible, which means that it will be accessed from the internet. The only safeguard is the access permissions configured as recommended.

Why?

The OneDrive is a public file storage service which provides local access on the computer.

Other OneDrive features for Business

The OneDrive for Business or organizations that uses SharePoint, there is an additional settings for restricting access based on location using the location-based policy. This setting is only configurable by administrators, and it is set on a wider scale.

There are more features which will not be discussed in this article. You can check out the Mircrosoft Learn for further details.

Leave a comment